The onionskin-paper letters sent during World War II prove Lady Gaga is right.

We are born this way. At least to a large degree.

After battle, seeing historic sites, while listing what items he'd like sent from home (including Brillo), the personality quirks of the father I knew shine through in letters from a young man to his sister.

And yet, there are a few surprises - and some questions that will always remain unanswered, since the 50 or so letters my cousin found among her mother's things this month don't come with replies.

But reading the letters, and reading between the lines, did reveal sides of my father he never talked about to his children.

He was certainly more dedicated to religious observances than I recall, although if your assignment is chaplain's assistant, it undoubtedly came with the territory.

"Today has been beautiful and warm but hardly recognizable here as the Sabbath,'' he wrote from Germany in November 1944. "We go around to different gun batteries while they are firing and have services and get quite a response. Religion has a new significance to the men when Death seems to lurk at every corner.

"You should have seen the church I improvised yesterday,'' he wrote from England a month earlier. "A church from a mess hall in two hours. ... The occasion was a memorial service for one of the boys who died.

"Chaplain Weaver and I held seven services'' on a Sunday in December 1944, he wrote from Germany. "In one place, we had services in a big barn, but the boys had moved a piano in and we had some fine singing. This afternoon we had services with the medics and they kept bringing in the (wounded) during the services. Two came in who had been badly burned by a mine explosion. One had his tongue blown out. ... What a life of extremes we live here. Extreme comfort, extreme pain.''

One of his siblings wrote about "what a challenge my work must be to serve the spiritual side of my fellow men. Dodging shells and sniper's bullets is a much more tangible challenge,'' was my father's reply.

As a T/5 (tech corporal), his jobs with the Ninth Army also included driving a Jeep and keeping it repaired. There was a lot of grousing about tire changing in his letters. Perhaps I have a better understanding of why he so hated the chore later in life.

And why for a kid who grew up on a farm, he was never big on roughing it.

"I was on guard duty last night and had a really sloppy night of it. Rain every shift, and mud up to my knees. I fell into three foxholes, ran into a barbed wire fence and cut my finger on it, slipped and fell twice in the mud, and coming into my own tent, I slipped and broke my tent pole and the tent went flopping down. My rifle was a cake of mud, my feet were so cold and wet they were numb and I was a mad as a wet hen. Be sure to send those wool socks the next time you can,'' he told his sister.

Page 2 of 3 - "And next weekend I am supposed to go camping, of all things,'' he wrote from Paris in late 1945. "And I remember telling myself last winter when I was in Germany, if anyone ever suggested picnicking or sleeping out to me, I would spit in their face!"

For a huge war with a huge number of soldiers, there were a fair number of "Of all the gin joints'' moments during his time in Europe. In October 1944 in England, my father's brother-in-law, who was in the Air Corps, "recognized one of our boys yesterday - it happened to be the general's driver - and he sent me a note by him.''

In Germany in 1945, at "a meeting for all chaplains at Ninth Army Headquarters in Braunchsweig,'' he managed to track down another brother-in-law: "Having seen a lot of the 83rd Div. vehicles around, I decided to to inquire as to their location. Ninth Army Hq. gave me all the dope and even let me call him. A bit complicated but fun. First you call Corps, then 83rd Div. Hq., then 308 Eng. Bn. ... He was on the wire in a jiffy and said to hurry on down'' to Bad Harzburg.

How my father got the OK to go visit my uncle in Bad Harzburg is one of those unanswered questions, but "I snapped a several pictures of Frank and a couple of us together'' says he did go.

Letters were more valuable than cigarettes - "there are a super-abundance of cigarettes on the front lines,'' he told his sister. "In fact, I can easily see why there is a shortage back home.'' But, in his message from Belgium in January 1945, he told her "this may be my last chance to write for some time as we are going to give the Russians some stiff competition. However, I will be thinking of you and looking for your letters.''

Two months earlier, he had sent this from Holland: "My mail still hasn't caught up with me, but of course our dash through England, France, Belgium and Holland has given it a merry chase to follow.''

In our six decades, I saw many sides of my father, and, thanks to his siblings, I could even envision what he was like as a child.

But I had never been able to envision him at a point where, in November 1944 in Germany, he would write: "Tomorrow I'll be an old man of 23. The chaplain has volunteered to open a bottle of Scotch issued to officers.

"War is hell, partying is fun.''

For the last decade of his life, I spent a lot of time encouraging him to get rid of old letters of no real interest to anyone anymore, but I am truly grateful my aunt saw value in keeping the letters from her brother.

Page 3 of 3 - They may be of little interest to anyone after I'm gone, but for now, glimpses of my father as a soldier are worth adding clutter at a point when I'm looking to thin the herd.

Even if most of the letters just confirm he was always very much himself.

Julia Spitz can be reached at 508-626-3968 or jspitz@wickedlocal.com. Follow her on Twitter at SpitzJ_MW.